


Glow

by jive



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 08:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11436582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jive/pseuds/jive
Summary: Gabriel could feel his breathing go a little shallower some days when the smog in LA was particularly bad, but the humidity of Bloomington —“We're not really in Bloomington, Gabe, it's just easier to say I'm from Bloomington for simplicity’s sake…”— made Gabriel feel like was outright suffocating on some of the worser days. And let’s not get started on the days when it rained...Jack and Gabriel spend part of their summer vacation on the Morrison farm.





	Glow

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel and summer companion to my other fic, [Melt](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8768713).

It's hot in Indiana. 

The summers in Los Angeles were hot, temperatures spiking to over 100°F on the worst of days —  _ “Almost 38°C, Reinhardt.” “Unbelievable!” _ — but temperature-wise, it's surprisingly similar to Bloomington in terms of averages.

But the humidity, my god, the  _ humidity _ … Gabriel could feel his breathing go a little shallower some days when the smog in LA was particularly bad, but the humidity of Bloomington —  _ “We're not really in Bloomington, Gabe, it's just easier to say I'm from Bloomington for simplicity’s sake…” _ — made Gabriel feel like was outright suffocating on some of the worser days. And let’s not get started on the days when it rained...

“It's not so bad,” Jack laughed, patting Gabriel's head as if in an attempt to comfort him. Gabriel could only groan and turn over where he lay on the spacious deck of the Morrison family home, swatting Jack's hand away, as the sweat on Gabriel's scalp only made the touch all the more irritating. 

“Speak for yourself,” Gabriel grumbled, tugging at the sweat-soaked collar of his shirt to fan himself.

“You can go back inside if you want,” Jack offered, “I know this isn’t the kind of heat you’re normally used to. Plus, I could probably finish digging the hole by myself.”

“Like hell I'm gonna bum around and be a freeloading guest, Jack. Your mom wanted this tree planted, and I promised I'd help her do it,” Gabriel grumbled back, letting go of his shirt and splaying his arm out once more. Sweat beaded on his face. It wasn't so much that the work made him tired, but the weather made him feel ridiculously sluggish.

“Well, you can't exactly do that laying sprawled out like a starfish on the porch, can you?” Jack teased, pulling off his cap and wiping his forehead with the back of his arm before putting it back on. Gabriel cracked open an eye to look at him and immediately regretted it.

Even in sweat-soaked farmer boy clothes, covered in dirt and grime  — _“They're just overalls, Gabe, they're normal. And comfy!”_ — Gabriel couldn't  believe how much of a golden boy Jack looked. His blond hair was even more a mess than usual — thanks to the unflattering baseball cap — and dirt was smeared in patches on his cheeks, blending in with the almost ridiculous amount of freckles that showed up almost overnight on his sunburned complexion. The desire to pull Jack in and kiss those barely chapped lips until they were as red as those cheeks flared in Gabriel's chest for the briefest of moments before Gabriel waved it and Jack away.

“Yeah, yeah, give me a minute,” Gabriel groaned as he rolled over again and dragged himself up to his feet. He took a few steps towards the stairs before stopping in his tracks. Jack shot him an odd look, and Gabriel shook that off too. “On second thought, lemme take a piss first. I'll be back.”

Jack laughed and waved Gabriel off before picking up his shovel, and going back to the hole the two of them had been digging. Gabriel felt a little guilty, given how close they were to being finished, but his bladder really did need to be emptied, and he had every intention of helping Jack again once he was finished.

He pulled off his boots once he got inside, remembering how insistent Dana Morrison was about keeping her hardwood floors clean of dirt — not that Gabriel could blame her, the Reyes household had a similar policy in regards to shoes worn inside — and making sure to keep his shoes on the rubber mat by the door. It had only been a few days since he and Jack had arrived, and Gabriel had only ever been in the house once before, back in winter of last year, but everything was so familiar that it almost nostalgic to be in the Morrison House again.

It was a pretty big house, but even so, Gabriel knew the layout like the back of his hand, and wasted no time making his way to the nearest bathroom. His feet and bladder guided him like an autopilot, and without needing to actively focus on anything, Gabriel's mind began to wander. He couldn't help but reflect on his visit so far as he walked through the house, photos of Jack and his family lining nearly each and every wall, and thoughts he thought he had pushed aside during the flight into and drive from Indianapolis, slowly began to percolate back into the forefront of his mind.

When Jack had brought him here last winter, he claimed that he was bringing home Gabriel as a boyfriend to meet the rest of the Morrison family. It was news to Gabriel, of course, as Jack had sprung that little detail on him literally moments before Gabriel even walked through the front door for the first time, and Gabriel could only go along with it, doing what any best friend would do to help a buddy get his family off his back for being single still. And of course, let's not mention the fact that Jack had kissed Gabriel — rather intensely, mind you — just moments before dropping that boyfriend bomb on him.

And yet, despite all this, nothing between the both of them had changed after they boarded their flight home and passed out in the same bed the moment they got back to base. Jack went about his life as usual, as did Gabriel, acting as if the two weeks spent acting like a real couple with their hands in each other's back pockets nearly 24/7 for two weeks hadn't ever happened. As if they were still in the Best Friends territory. As if neither of them actually had any desire to escalate their relationship to a romantic one.

But Gabriel did. And he knew Jack did too.

The only issue was that neither of them wanted to admit that to each other.

Gabriel frowned, and cursed Jack for his cowardice.

But not before cursing his own, of course.

There had been so many chances for him to bring up the subject — this small vacation-slash-family-visit alone had enough that Gabriel couldn't even count them all — and each and every time, Gabriel had let them slip from his hands. Rather than making his idle, occasional daydreams —  of holding Jack in a long embrace, pulling Jack into a heartfelt kiss, or hell, just telling Jack how he really felt —  into a reality, Gabriel just let them stay what they were, thoughts and daydreams.

He flushed the toilet and washed his hands, still deep in thought as he splashed water on his face to wash away some of the gross feeling caking his skin. His eyes caught his own reflection as he wiped the water from his forehead. A scowl made its way onto his face as he got a good look at himself.

“Gabriel Reyes, what the hell are you doing…” he mumbled to himself, “Just fucking tell him already.”

He ran a hand down his face and sighed to himself, letting the water drip back into the sink. “What if it's not what he wants?”

He frowned at his own reflection. “What if it is? You won't find out unless you tell him.”

Gabriel bent down to splash at his face a few more times, only righting himself after he took a deep breath to calm himself.

“...I’m gonna tell him,” he said to himself, resolution all but burning in his eyes as he finished wiping the water from his face and left the bathroom.

He put his shoes on and felt his determination all but plummet when he walked outside and saw Jack sitting down on the front steps, hunched over so Gabriel could see the smattering of freckles that dotted the top of his spine and trailed lower into his shirt. An overwhelming feeling of wanting to press his mouth against that overheated skin left his heart fluttering a bit, pushing his previously bolstered confidence out the mental window.

“ _... Maybe later_ ,” he thought to himself, picking up his shovel and going back to work, doing everything he could to distract himself from idle thoughts.

‘Later’ didn't come that day, nor the next, nor the day after that.

No, Gabriel spent the next four days constantly delaying himself for the most ridiculous and meaningless reasons, preferring to wallow in anxiety and self doubt until the perfect opportunity presented itself to him the night before their small vacation was scheduled to be over, like a spotlight aimed a silver platter with neon lights decorating the pedestal and spelling out the words TELL HIM in obnoxious, glowing magenta and teal letters.

The sun was setting on their second to last night in Indiana, and from the porch swing at the back of the house, Jack and Gabriel watched the sun slowly sink behind the horizon. Gabriel took a swig of his beer, blinking and making a noise of surprise when a flash of light on his knuckle caught his eye. He quickly swallowed the sip of booze, wiping his mouth with his free hand as he watched the flash of light return, blinking in and out slowly as it floated lazily around him.

Just as he reached out to try and grab it as gently as possible, his eyes caught a glimpse of another glow. Then another. And another.

“Whoa,” he breathed in awe, doing little more than watching the blinking, glowing balls of light flit about the porch and the back yard beyond it.

A quiet laugh rumbled from the other side of the swing, and Gabriel was about to turn and tell the laugh’s owner off when he saw how genuine the smile was on his face.

“You've honestly never seen a firefly?” Jack asked, holding up a hand as if cupping one of the fluttering, glowing bugs .

“Not in person, no,” Gabriel answered shrugging his shoulders at the same time. He reached out his hand in a similar manner, smiling to himself when a firefly landed in his palm briefly. “We don't have them in L.A., and most of the places I've been stationed in are the same way.”

“Oh?” Jack remarked curiously. Gabriel could feel Jack's eyes on him, and fought the urge to squirm beneath his gaze. Instead, he risked a glance at Jack himself, raising an eyebrow as Jack got off the swing and tucked his cell-phone into his pocket.

“Going somewhere?”

“Yeah,” Jack answered, smiling as a small gleam sparkled in his eyes not unlike the glow of the fireflies around them. “Come with me. I wanna show you something.”

Jack walked off before Gabriel even had a chance to answer, and what else could Gabriel do?

He peeked into the house from outside the bay window, motioning to one of Jack's brothers — was it Chris, Sam, or Braedon? Telling the triplets apart was always a puzzle he could never solve — that he and Jack were heading out, and quickly jogged off to follow Jack after the brother gave him a thumbs up from his seat on the sofa in acknowledgement.

Jack waited for Gabriel long enough for him to catch up, and they soon fell into stride with each other with Jack leading the way. They walked for quite a while in their usual, comfortable silence, walking dirt paths and through the woods nearby, until Jack finally stopped in his tracks near what Gabriel could see was a small creek.

“Watching fireflies from the porch is nice and comfy and all, but nothing beats this spot,” Jack said, taking a seat on one a rather sizeable flat rock. “Lot less light pollution and more importantly, no one around to ruin it.”

Gabriel's heart skipped a little at that, and he did his best not to read too much into it, lest his thoughts backfire on him. Instead, he let out a small noise of acknowledgement and replied, “Your brothers aren't _that_ bad, Jack.”

Jack let out a small laugh, shaking his head, and patted the space beside him in lieu of a response. Gabriel could only go along with it, carefully sitting himself right beside Jack, with their shoulders barely inches away from each other, he situated himself. Gabriel tried not to focus too much on it, on the intimate proximity between the two of them, but the way Jack kept leaning into him, glancing at him as if sizing him up every now and them, made that nearly impossible to do.

Gabriel distracted himself as best he could, averting his own gaze to the sky to take in the last traces of the red, golden glow before it dipped behind the horizon. The slow appearance of the starry night sky did nothing to slow down the thoughts racing through his mind at a mile a minute, and Gabriel found himself focusing more and more on Jack's presence beside him rather than the spectacular view around him.

It was gorgeous — the kind of landscape you'd find only in movies and paintings — what with almost every star in the night sky visible above their heads and the gentle glow of countless fireflies blinking around them. And yet…

And yet…

Gabriel couldn't help the way his gaze gravitated towards Jack every so often, taking in the happy and relaxed contentment on his face, and finding himself wanting to see that on the pillow beside him every morning when he woke up. A warmth flared in his chest, and at that moment, Gabriel could tell his heart had made the decision of when he should speak for him.

He didn't even realize he was staring until Jack let out a laugh and nudged his shoulder with his own.

“Something on my face, buddy?”

Gabriel shook his head and took a deep breath, mustering as much courage as he could.

“Jack, can I talk to you about something?” he asked.

“Of course. What is it? Something wrong?” Jack sat up a little straighter, clearly on edge and concerned for what Gabriel might have to say.

“No, nothing's wrong,” he replied, shaking his head. He took a moment to gather his thoughts, trying not to let the worried expression on Jack's face fluster him into haphazardly expressing his feelings. “I just… Remember when we came here for Christmas last year?”

Jack nodded.

“And how you told me the truth about the ‘bringing my boyfriend to meet my family’ thing after I'd already suffered through two hours of dinner and dessert with your parents and your brothers?”

Jack hesitated for a moment before he nodded again. “Yeah…”

“And how you kissed me so many times in front of them before that? Once even before we got inside the house earlier that night?”

Jack visibly winced at that, his expression clouding over slightly. “Yeah,” he replied, the guilt in that one word so strong Gabriel could feel his own gut twist in sympathy.

“Well, I've been thinking since then —  a _lot_ since then — about last Christmas… about _us_ ,” Gabriel said, pausing briefly and glancing over to make sure Jack was still looking at him. He wanted to make absolutely sure Jack was seeing him and listening to his words, so that he'd know just how serious Gabriel was when he said his next words. “...about how much I actually wished that were real. That it wasn't just pretend. That _this_ ...” He reached over to take Jack by the hand, running his thumb over the scarred knuckles, and waiting for Jack to pull away. When he didn't, Gabriel pulled the hand to his lips, and kissed it on the on the knuckle, before turning it over to press another kiss into the open palm. He interlaced his fingers with Jack's own right after, gripping it firmly before he finished. “That this relationship between us was something more than just friends… That you knew how much you mean to me and how much I… _how much I love you, Jack_.”

A heavy sigh escaped from Gabriel's lips, relief at his own confession washing over him like some sort of cleansing. Everything was up to Jack now; the ball was in his court. It didn't matter how Jack was going to answer; Gabriel did what he had been agonizing over for so long. He told Jack how he felt, and that was all that mattered. If Jack didn't return his feelings, then…

Actually, scratch that.

Jack's response did matter, immensely so, and Gabriel loosened his grip on Jack's hand in fear of Jack feeling just how much he was shaking in anticipation of an answer.

A deafening silence fell over the two of them, sounds of the running water from the creek ringing in Gabriel's ears like white noise. Minutes felt like an eternity, and Gabriel found himself almost wishing for Jack's outright rejection of him with each passing second, if only so the agonizing torture would come to some sort of merciful end.

His ears perked up when he heard Jack take a deep breath beside him.

Unconsciously, Gabriel did the same, bracing himself for what might come.

“...Do you seriously mean that?” Jack asked, the hesitation and wariness heard in his voice so thick Gabriel could almost feel himself choking on it.

His heart throbbed in his chest, and he nodded in reply. “Yeah, I do. I love you, Jack Morrison,” Gabriel breathed. He dared to make eye contact with Jack, gaze falling to the side when a firefly hovering between them seemed to glow in warning. He swallowed the lump in his throat, trying to control the racing of his heart at the realization that Jack looked as scared as he felt in that brief moment their eyes met.

Another eternity of silence fell between them, and Gabriel could feel his heart both stopping and racing at the same time, palms sweating like a nervous schoolboy.

He nearly yelped when he felt Jack's hand tense around his, holding it so tightly that Gabriel could swear he heard some of his knuckles popping.

“Ow, Jack! What the-” he began to shout, voice cutting out completely when he was forcibly tugged by the arm.

He fell silent when he felt warm lips press against his, body frozen and unwilling to move lest his actions be misinterpreted and the moment between them shattered. The warmth was familiar in all the best ways, and Gabriel felt his pulse skyrocketing and his heart soaring.

But still…

But still…

He didn’t dare get his hopes up until he got a solid answer.

After a few moments, Jack began to pull away, and though Gabriel wanted to keep the moment going, wanted to keep kissing Jack and even hold him tight, Gabriel did the same. He sat back on the rock where he was before, making note of the fact that Jack still hadn’t let go of his hand even after the both of them righted themselves.

Gabriel looked at Jack expectantly, breath held in his throat in anticipation.

Jack smiled warmly, and simply replied, “I love you too, Gabriel Reyes.”

In that moment, Gabriel felt all the tension rush from his body in one giant wave, and he let out a huge sigh, body visibly deflating in that same moment.

“Oh, thank fucking god,” he said, clutching his chest with his free hand. He couldn’t help the rush of emotion overwhelming him, and nearly hysterical from relief, he began laughing.

Jack let him be for a few moments, unusually patient as he merely sat and watched as Gabriel laughed all his anxieties away, hand resolutely holding Gabriel’s own all the while.

When the laughter finally dwindled down, and Gabriel felt himself drifting back to solid ground emotionally, it was his turn to pull Jack towards him, open hand holding Jack by the cheek as he leaned in to return Jack’s favor. Their lips pressed together once more, eager and earnest as they met over and over again for heartfelt kiss after kiss.

Had it not been for the fact that Jack confirmed he felt the same way, Gabriel would have been as embarrassing as it was for Gabriel to admit, in that moment — despite all the war, despite the omnics, despite the SEP, and despite everything else that was going wrong across the globe — he felt as if everything was right in the world for once, and happiness glowed as warmly in his chest as the glow of the fireflies fluttering around the two of them and as brightly as the stars in the night sky above.


End file.
